Rue

Your comments are nonsensical. First of all you assume when people travel they must speak the language of the country they travel to. That in itself is absurd enough but then you compound your illogical assumption by blaming the victim for not speaking English and then suggesting he brought it on himself because he should have learned English. He was in an international airport. Tell me did it not dawn on you that an international airports people travelling through them may not speak the language of the country of the airport and so international airports are supposed to be equipped to handle many languages? Is that hard for you to fathom? The real issue is that no one at the airport made an attempt to communicate with this man in Polish and they knew he was Polish. All they had to do was take a cell phone and use a Bell operator to translate. The real issue is they left him over 8 hours sitting and being ignored. Anyone of us in a foreign country faced with that would be upset. What compounds this insanity is that his mother was just on the other side of the corridor and sent home and the airline made no effort to service this trapped man and told the wife they had no idea where he was. Of course that seems to have gone right over your head. What if this man could not speak at all because of an illness. Right I get it-he deserves to die because he should not travel if he is a mute. If a traveller can't speak English and has a heart attack-they should die if they can't call for help in English. Brilliant. I am not sure if you came on this forum to bait people or you are genuinely this ignorant but you had better pray you don't ever travel outside that little tiny world of yours and ever need someone's help. What goes around comes around. If you can not see the needless tragedy in what happened do us all a favour and stop speaking. The fact you communicate in English does not make it any more meaningful. Your attempt to ridicule a man who died needlessly and in pain is as low as it gets.

Toad I enjoyed your responses and comments. Canadiens your attempt to debate Leafless is commendable but do take care. After awhile it is like banging your head on the wall. You will eventually get either a headache or find your brains leaking out. JBG the cheap shot comments about Muslims again lends to the appearance you are a hatemonger. Here is the bottom line. There are Canadians of all religions, races, genders, body type, weight, age, i.q. level who will engage in anti-semitic behaviour, often using the pretext of criticizing Israel. Sometimes it is deliberate and intentional sometimes it is not and flows from the fact that it is extremely difficult for many to understand the concept of Jewish identity since it can refer to religion, a collective cultural identity, a collective political identity, or some other collective reference. Likewise Canadians will make remarks that engage in the same kind of comments that assign subjective negative characteristics to a targetted group to then use to incite hatred or intolerance against them whether they be Muslims, native peoples, women, gays, Ukrainians, Irish, Chinese and hell dare I say it Toronto Maple Leaf fans. But that is the point. No one ethnic group or "race" or "indentified group" is different then any other in this country when it comes to making remarks or comments that display ignorance and hateful, spiteful remarks. Yes there are people in the name of Islam who take their religion and use it as a pretext to engage in anti-semitic or anti-Western beliefs, etc. but Muslims have no monopoly on this behaviour and like the rest of us, the vast majority of them like us do not aspire to be terrorists or bigots. I do believe myself there are deeply entrenched issues between Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, and other religious groups that flow from people whose religious views are rigid and inflexible and what I would call fundamentalist or orthodox. I think we need to challenge anyone of any group or religion or category for the exact same reasons when they are engaging in intolerance. I live in a part of the country that has many minority groups and some members are extremist hate mongers. I will be damned if I let that turn me into a hate monger against all the people in the same group they are in. That is precisely what they want. I go back to what Toad said. People came to this country for the same basic reasons. Each people encountered intolerance and hardships and they either became better for it or worse as a result of it. We can take the ignorance we find ourselves emersed in and learn positive things from it or negative things from it. That is up to us as individuals and when we get together with others. I believe this is the kind of issue we deal with in our actual day to day actions not necessarily just in the words we use. The native people I believe have tried to warn us time and time again we are a collective of collectives and how we act effects many levels of collectives or communities and not just ourselves on an individual level. So on that note, excuse me if I pass on assuming anyone Radical lives in a hovel or any one group is more prone to violence and ignorance then any other. From where I sit all humans are equally as capable of being ignorant and violent although I am willing to concede Toronto Maple Leaf fans are not violent.

The debate as to animal rights and treatment very much is reflected in the cultural values of each society and of course its level of lifestyle. I think for many of us who live in urban societies that have pretty much cut us off from the world of nature and encased us in cement and pollution often the concern about the mistreatment of animals is a symptom of our spiritual malaise from being trapped in cement and a world of impersonal material pursuit. It is amazing how one's perspective changes when they leave the city for a rural area and what kind of work they do. Example, on the one hand for those of us in the city, killing seals seems cruel and inhumane-but if you are a Newfoundlander who depends on it for a living and it is a necessity the seals don't look so cute. In Canada some of us spoil our cats and dogs and of course in other countries they are eaten or treated like vermin. I personally think the teachings and customs of our native peoples are valuable guides to dealing with these kinds of issues. If we respect the rules of nature and understand we are part of the planet sharing it with other life forms-a lot of the kinds of issues that flow from animal cruely and animal rights type debates take on I think an easier to reconcile perspective between needing animals to eat and keep us warm and not torturing or abusing animals. I am the first to admit, since I buy my meat in nice neat cellophane packages and not directly from the slaughter-house, it makes it easier for me to forgive myself. I love animals. I hate fruit and vegetables. It is a problem.

Oleg we don't have any ruthless businessmen called Vinny or Aldo-just "Bernie" and one would have to hope whatever belief they had that Bernie is gonna rot in hell. But that is a story for another thread.

Lol I am going there in a month. I will take that in mind. As an aside I was in Mexico on the day of the 9-11 attack. The Mexicans had no problem charging stranded Americans higher rates in hotels after that at least where I was. If there is one thing I learned and that is if I am on vacation and I see a Bubba, I buy him a few beers. You never know when a Canadian such as myself will need a bodyguard. I just wish you guys however would stop looking for Taco Bells in Mexico.

Lol. There goes my rating. I will save my opinions on Hugo for a different thread. I personally think he is a lunatic and dangerous and responsible for assisting organized crime and terror operations. For that matter I think Ahmadinejad is also a dangerous lunatic. However I do not think the fact that either is in my personal opinion a lunatic germaine to the points I was making and that is that I believeforeign policy should be based on carefully thought out responses and plans and not chauvenistic emotional reactions. I would argue it is precisely because the Bush foreign policy was based on knee jerk chauvenistic reactions with no carefully thought out plans the U.S. repeatedly became entrenched in one disasterous public relations catastrophe after another and the debacle in Iran and probably Afghanistan. All one has to do to see the shortcomings of knee jerk chauvenistic response foreign policy from the Bush years to see what it was unable to achieve in his 8 years in the White House. For an example of well thought out and carefully planned foreign policy initiatives may I suggest someone look at the United States Army's initiative in Djibouti which has proven a resounding success and is the exact opposite of what Bush wanted in Iraq and what the US Armed Forces first suggested should have been their role model in Iraq and Afghanistanand and is a model the Canadian Armed Forces has had mixed success with in the past. Lol-anyone think Hugo is harmless? Please go have lunch with him. He might find you tasty.

Lol am I that old. I am 52 and growing up in Montreal I also confirm Zionist was often used in the Jewish commmunity or by non Jews in a positive way. I seem to recall it started being used in a derogatory way in the l1970's after the Yom Kippur war in 1973. I concede I have no idea how it was used in B.C. I know the biggest jewish community in Canada up to the 70's was Montreal, then Winnipeg, then Toronto then it switched to Toronto as many non Francophones moved out of the city. I profess ignorance as to the Jewish communities in B.C. I would imagine though they were all pot and "shroom" heads. (oh come on we know about B.C. and we know why Mats Sundin moved there)

I enclose a paper with a detailed response that argues the words of Admadinejad are consistent in their call to violence against Israel and its destruction to serve as a counter response from the other side of the debate to the original poster's thread which I appreciate he picked up on from the Wikepedia article; http://www.jcpa.org/text/ahmadinejad2-words.pdf. I think it is fair to state that Farsi is not a language that can be exactly translated so its translatations are in fact interpretations-so distortions do happen. When looking at the speeches from Iran I would argue one can not just look at one speech but should pay attention to the many speeches that eminate from its President or its Ministry of Information and to look for patterns or re-emerging themes that continually get repeated. I think what people also need to keep in mind is that in the Middle East there is a long tradition of Middle East politicians saying one thing to the West and another to their own Eastern and domestic audiences and how the two are often completely opposite. A classic example of that was Arafat who would say he wants peace with Israel in English and seconds later say the exact opposite in Arabic to his Eastern audiences at the same press conference. To understand Middle East politics one must look at all the speeches on the same subject to BOTH the East and West audiences. That is part of what makes Middle East political statements so baffling and tricky to analyze. They don't directly translate from Arabic or Farsi to start with as I said. Then the politicians say different things to different audiences. Then there is the phenomena I like to call Israel bashing where the politicians puff themselves up making incredibky violent threats and anti-semitic comments to whip up their audiences to dettract from their own internal political woes. The problem is this technique of Israel bashing and anti-semitic references is so systemic that it has become deeply entrenched in the media whether that be radio, t.v. or in the printed press and as long as this scapegoating exercise continues a long term peaceful solution between Israel and Palestine becomes problematic as it fuels hatred and distrust on both sides. So with due respect I would contend trying to spin Ahmadinejad into a misunderstood peaceful man is absurd. I woudl argue he reflects an extreme fundamentalist perspective that has the support of the majority of the religious clerics on the ruling council. He has been able with the clerical council's full condonation been able to commit numerous human rights violations including torturing and killing political opponents or perceived foes whether they be students, gay or feminist activists, trade unionists, democratic reformists, communists, socialists, Bahaiis or Jews let alone Muslims of minority sects. He is now involved in shutting down the press as an opponent tries to run against him. This is a man who fully condones and has assisted in the financing and training of terrorists across the world including Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza through his Reolutionary Guard. This is a man whose government has direct ties to organzied crime syndicates in the cocaine and heroin cartels where drug money is laundered to fuel terror cell activities. So I think to try spin this man as a harmless gum flapper would be as naive as doing the same for Hugo Chavez for example. That said how wide spread his support is within Iran no one realy knows because the state is ruled with fear and brutality. How the average person on the street really feels is not known until after they leave the country and have no relatives left behind who can be killed if they say anything. What has emerged from ex Iranian nationals is that this is a brutal regime and one can not openly be defiant of it and when students or interest groups are brave enough to stand up they risk their very lives and being tortured. I think the real shame in this is-what if the average Iranian is a captive of their government? I can not imagine wanting to lump them in the same category as the brutal despots who control them if they are being brutalized and victimized. So while I am not a secular socialist like Peter F but more of a centralist typical Canadian Gwynne Dyer kind of extreme middle of the road guy, I don't want to get into the kind of rhetoric that slurs all Iranians because of the policies of their government the same way I hate it when people do that to Israelis or Jews or Muslims or Arabs or anyone else. So while I respectfully disagree on many of Peter F's perspectives on certain foreign policies I defer to his consistency and logic shown in many of his threads where he speaks of not mixing up our sentiments as to governments with the people themselves. I know he sounded a little righteous in his point, but I do not think that was the intent and I and many others have said the same thing many times. It does come across preachy but I think it is not meant to be. We all should ask-how far do we want to go with any political conflict - it is easy to get into chauvenistic name calling with such leaders. Their very language baits and annoys to try get that kind of response. Yes it could be dangerous to appease genuine lunatics, but surely in other instances such as the way the U.S. has ignored the Korean regime, it can also help to defuse potential conflict. I guess the age old question is when does one stay calm and ignore and when should they strike back? If there was an easy answer to that there would never be any wars. so that said I think this is a topic where I can respectfully disagree with those who would downplay Ahmadinejad but certainly agree typecasting all Iranians or taking this politicians words verbatum can be problematic when pursuing a foreign policy response. I personally think the new U.S. regime has demonstrated it is going to take a more measured response. That may not be such a bad thing.

Lol. I get your point and agree but I think Libertarians and the disciples of Lyndon Larouche, Ron Paul and hey who knows Rue Paul, may no agree with you.

I am of the opinion we all know that too much or too little of anything including regulation can be a problem. The pendulum has swung back and forth and it will keep swinging. All I will say is I would hate to end living in a state like China or Russia and I think we are bloody fortunate in Canada.

You did not ask a question you made a comment and I quote: "one can have a career destroyed simply by saying something bad about Jews (see Mel Gibson for a prime example). " The original poster's question I understood. Sulaco's response for example offered some excellent insights as to the original poster's question. The above remark however suggests you believe peoples careers are destroyed by saying something bad about Jews. That is a subjective assumption and one that assigns a characteristic, i.e., a power to destroy to all us Jews when people speak poorly about us. That Sir is anti-semitic drivel not cloud formations. It is a classic example of an aside where you just toss it out and now claim your sole concern is to learn from Jews to help Romas? Right-of course. Get real. People on a daily basis challenge the holocaust's existence and use it to debase and insult Jews, as a pretext to attack the right of the state of Israel to exist and as your remark deliberately suggests will destroy any mere mortal that gets in its way. That is why I challenged you-the above statement. It has nothing to do with the Romas nor is it even remotely germaine to understanding why people do not take the time to understand what happened to the Romas. What it does do is suggest-Jews have something, Romas should have it to. That is precisely the kind of reasoning I challenge. The Jews have nothing the Romas want or vice versa. That is what you do not get and your remark that Jews destroy careers reveals with due respect. Romas know what happened. They remember their legacy. Whether you remember it has nothing to do with what we Jews do to remember it or what righteous gentiles or gays or 7th day Adventists, do to remember it-it has to do with how YOU remember it. Stop looking to see what Jews have and pay attention to what you DO NOT HAVE and why. Do you really think anyone who survives a catastrophe can do anything more then try remember it and maintain records of it? That is all they can do-stop assigning them extra powers of destruction, coercion and intimidation and understand if people remember what happened to them it is because those individuals, on an individual basis choose to do so without being forced or threatened or coerced. More to the point nothing in the Mel Gibson scenario has anything at all to do with issues as to how we create education or historic curriculum to help people understand the past. Mel Gibson did not get into trouble because he questioned the holocaust-he got into hot water because he was drunk and made hateful slurs about Jews as a people. Interestingly Mel Gibson has never denied the holocaust. He has said many stupid things but that is one thing he did not do. As for the Romas their memory in the holocaust will be preserved by their people and by the State of Israel and by the numerous holocaust studies programs and courses across the world. Whether you choose to open your eyes to them and stop looking at Jews as if they have managed to create a double standard as to the horrors from the Shoa remains the question. Protest thine innocence with someone else.

Lol. You like me? You are insane. Have you told anyone about this? a peep. I approach the conflict as I would any land conflict or any tribal or any other kind of conflict-with a view to trying to be neutral in terms of moral judgement or legal assumptions and trying to recognize two equals, both with valid and strong and often emotional arguements-you want me to be reasonable-to do that I have to dettach from emotion. My personal distrust of terrorists, extremists on both sides has to be set aside. The bottom line is I have faith. I have faith Palestinian farmers will be able to live and farm in a peaceful world. I have faith Jews will be able to live in Israel without fear of violence and terror from anyone. I have faith the extremists on either side will give way to rational discourse which will require some tough negotiations where both sides are not going to get what they want but may get what presents them both with the best chance of living peacefully side by side. I have faith in rational peace loving Palestinians to negotiate with rational peace loving Israelis and to find their way with the help of rational neutral mediators. Now that is naive but it is no more wacky then you saying you like me. We are both nutzo.

Oleg just admit it. You are the way you are because of Big Macs. But hey no one is perfect. I am the result of a Whopper or Two. (of course with fake orange mutant cheese)

Oleg just admit it. You are the way you are because of Big Macs. But hey no one is perfect. I am the result of a Whopper or Two. (of course with fake orange mutant cheese)

Yeesh. I am not sure you will ever get a cooking show on t.v. now. No wait I take it back. You just might. Mickey Rourke should be your co-host.

What makes you so sure you know who any land belongs to? See that is exactly the problem Myata. You allow your politics and of course emotional attachment to them as evidenced by words like "ridiculous" and "outrageous" blind you. You simply assume there is a right and a wrong and that one set of people own the West Bank and the other does not. It is simple for you. Black and white so of course any formula that does not define land rights as black and white would appear "ridiculous" or "outrageous" to you. I would suggest your perspective is coloured by your political and cultural biases. You ar deeply entrenched as to what is and what isn't. I would suggest a native Canadian might using their cultural perspective find it "ridicoulous" that some of us humans continue to claim ANY land belongs to us. In an ideal world I would agree with the aboriginal customs. This notion any human owns the earth or a portion of it is absurd. At best we reside on a tiny portion of it for a limited period of time until we expire. In that brief period of time we manage to make quite a mess of it. The West Bank has historic meaning to Jews, Christians and Muslims just as the land within Israel and Jordan do. Land rights contrary to what you believe don't just exist because you say they exist. The majority of people you feel should "own" the West Bank have no legal title to it and never will. At best they are dirt poor farmers being used by the Palestinian Authority as pawns in a political game. As for the Jewish settlers, they claim no differently then the Palestinians they have an inalienable right to the same land based on the exact same reasons. The "trading" you quickly dismiss is what civilized people do. You want to thump and bang and scream and cling to tribalism no one will stop you. I simply see two conflicted peoples and do not see black and white just grey. I also think the very crux of the conflict flows from value processes such as yours that perceives the world as "mine" and "yours". Myself I try look at things from a practical perspective. I live in a society that requires I purchase a home on a title to property based on a legal system that states the land is owned by some old lady n England with bad teeth and funny looking children. I deal with it. While no doubt you will be blinded until you die in this war of "its mine!" I maintain the perspective that for most of us we barely have time to burp in the historic continuum before we become maggot food. Excuse me if I pass on any more political rhetoric as to this issue. Baboon pack wars over pissing rights gets monotonous after awhile.

Why are you trying to play one group off the other in your remarks? Are you genuinely interested in the discrimination against Roma peoples or are you just using it as an opportunity to take a shot at Jews, i.e., "while one can have a career destroyed simply by saying something bad about Jews (see Mel Gibson for a prime example). " I am not sure if the above comment was intentional or not. Here is the point. The persecution of Romas including their slaughter in the Shoa is well known to Jews and is part of Israeli and Jewish holocaust studies programs. Why people do not take the time to find out what happened to the Romas is a universal question as to why people are ego-centric. Please discuss the issue without using words that can be construed to suggest it confers unfair historic benefit to Jews. It does not-it simply manifests ignorance of Romas. There is no competition between Jews and Romas or for that matter between Jews, Romas, 7th Dat Adventists, Jehova's Witnesses, gays or righteous gentiles who perished in the death camps. We all respect each other's legacies. As for Mel Gibson you might want to consider that his problems are a lot more complicated then getting drunk and mouthing off in a stupor about Jews. More to the point his career has not suffered. Of course if you want to provide proof of a Hollywood conspiracy to have victimized him please prove it. Mel Gibson is an emotionally unstable and troubled soul and that probably has a lot to do with his father and the extremist intolerant religious views he was brought up on plus his unresolved issues with his father and his drinking and I think most people would agree while he is a disturbed and angry man he brought his problems on himself with his conduct. Back to the Roma people they are simply yet another example of what "civilized Christian" European society did and does with those perceived to look or be different. There are few Jews left to kick around (although it continues under the pretense of anti-Israeli protests) but it continues to be directed at Romas and other "coloured folks", i.e., Turks, Africans. So what is it you resent-Jews or the mistreatment of Romas? Yah I know, you have only concern for Romas.

The Roma people were believed to have migrated from northern India about 1,000 years ago. They are actually a collective of tribes with at least 2 languages, Sinti and Roma or Romani. The word Gypsies came about as it is short for Egyptians because some believed that is where they came from. Like the Jews of Europe, because they were non Christian and also not allowed to own land or enjoy equal citizenship they were forced to live in segregated ghettoes and become Nomads of Europe. Their dark-skin, language, culture, clothing, no different then with the Jews served as fuel for Europeans to create myths and stereotypes about them and become suspicious and and fearful of them. Inerestingly like the native peoples of Canada, Christian European societies and theur governments tried to assimilate them by illegally taking away their their children and placing them with Christian families or in Christian educational institutions. Sound familiar? European governments also like our North American governments, rounded them up and tried to force them to become farmers, outlawing their customs, language, and clothing as well as forcing them to attend Christian schools and churches. European states also issued decrees, laws, and mandates discriminating against the Romas no different then what was done with the Jews and the Romas like Jews were constantly targetted for attacks which saw their communities mass murdered after being raped, beaten, etc. It was in he early 1700's the King of Prussia, Frederick William I of Prussia passed a law ordering all Romas over the age of 18 be hung. Just like with the Jews there were Roma hunts where good Christians got on their horses and went after them like they were foxes killing them. Like Jews they were registered, sterilized, ghettoized, and then deported to concentration and death camps by the Nazis and it is estimated somewhere between 250,000 to 500,000 Romas died in the holocaust. The Romas refer to the holocaust which we Jews call the Shoah as the "Porajmos" which means the "Devouring" and I believe that word is powerful and appropriate. So are they all crooks and pick-pockets? Well it is like anything else. If you segregate people and cut them off from the main-stream you force them to be itinerant. Romas like Jews could not own land. They could not own businesses or become professionals and they were constantly being shit on. So they do what scapegoats and cursed hated people do, they became insular. They turned inwords from the hostile world into their own world and did what they could to survive and yes some were forced to become petty thieves and pick-pockets and like Jews were accused of every crime and evil behaviour there was including like Jews alleging engaging in secret practices with Christian children and making food from their blood. Today Romas like native peoples in North America have huge social problems trying to assimilate. They are trying to prserve their culture in Europe at a time when they are despised and yes in certain cities they have become a nuisance and are often arrested for pick-pocketing and push and grab scams and yes some beg but no they are not all thieves although one could raise the image of Shylock or Fagan and say their is striking similiarity-humans turned into allegedly vile creatures by the hostile environment around them. All I know is their history is remarkably similar to the Jews of Europe and many other peoples who have been the source of continuous persecution. Whether they ever find an escape from their cursed life by assimilation or by achieving equality and self-respect, etc. is anyone's guess. European societies at the best of times have not exactly been tolerant and in today's recession, tolerance is probably less likely as everyone turns inwords and finds the word hostile.

Myata we respectfully are probably always going to disagree for obvious reasons but I will not engage you in the usual tit for tat on this one. At least I can do that. What I am conceding as a well known supporter of Israel however is that the policies of the Israeli government on the West Bank have been flawed and they are an obstacle to peace. I have tried to explain the complexity of the legal problems in an apolitical way and in a manner most Israelis have been willing to speak about the same way-not to justify the mistakes but to acknowledge them. I can onkly remind you time and time again in surveys the vast majority of Israelis are willing to trade land for peace. Myata I have been on the West Bank and I know how toxic the situation is to Palestinians. I am not trying to give you the usual one sided rhetoric on this matter. That is all I can do. I have seen bad shit from the PLO and Palestinian extremists, now PA officials and their corupt shake downs of poor Palestinian farmers and extremist Jewish settlers and constant tension at the check-points that humiliate and incite further resentment. Yes there is a lot of political anger to deal with and people to ask to stand down. I am not holding my breath. I know you disagree but I think Tzipi Levni had and has the balls to see the Israeli side through to peaceful negotiations. I am not sure if they kill Abbas before this is over but I hope not. I also think and I know you won't agree that Netanyahu when the doors are closed and he does not have to sound bellicose for domestic consumption is not as extreme as the media would suggest he is although I personally am not and will never be a Likud supporter and will always be a Kadima Levni supporter. I do not like his politics but beneath the beligerent and bellicose words is someone who is no idiot and will not allow any extremist Jewish or Muslim, Israeli or Palestinian dictate his policies but yes I concede trying to pull out Jewish settlers would be no easy political task. My gut reaction is if it ever came to that Likud, Kadima, Labour would form a unity government to see that through but that is a long way off. That legal mumbo jumbo I told you about, that believe it or not has to be sorted through and it can be. Myata there was a time when the IDF and PLO worked together on the West Bank delivering medical supplies and water to local Palestinians. I witnessed it. It hasn't all been insanity and all I can do is forcus on the positive for now as naive as that sounds. The alternative just doesn't do anything but fuel name calling and hatred.

Hang on now. Let us once you and me put the emotion aside on this mess we are talking about. Private purchase of land from Palestinians on the West Bank may or may not be legal. It will depend on each individual transaction and whether the person who sold the land had proper title to it in the first place and then whether they did so with full legal capacity. If yes to both counts, then it would be a legal purchase and transfer of ownership and no that is not mumbo jumbo it is how the law works and international law would have no choice but to recognize the land title of the person who legitimately has it. That is why this mess is so complicated. Some of the sales may have been fraudulent, others legitimate and some may have been compelled through coercion. You and I do not know. As for sovereignty, that notion deals with the right to be a state and promulgate laws. If for example a state came about on the West Bank, that nation could have the authority to unilaterally exprioriate lands for state security, use of public utilities, roads, railways, airports and government functions, but if it simply seized legall owned land of Israels and gave them to Palestinians yes those Israelis would have an international legal right to seek compensation and under domestic laws might have that right as well. This is why for example within Israel proper, the Israeli Supreme Court for example has recognized the right of Israeli Muslims or Arabs who lost their land to expropriation the right to compensation. Now in a black and white world, Palestine becomes a nation and all Israelis sent back to Israel with ze4ro compensation. However if that happens then Israeli Arabs who claim to be the descendants of Palestinians who chose to stay behind in Israel and become citizens what becomes of their right to compensation? In a black and white world of partisan politics, some of us just see this from one perspective and say any Arab in the Middle East has rights, any Israeli Jew does not but in the real world of law, both parties are considered to have equally as legitimate and competing rights to private title ownership as well as the right to a sovereign state. This is why I have stated its not an easy legal situation and no the law is not mumbo jumbo. That mumbo jumbo is the difference between violence and terror and civilized humans finding an orderly, peaceful way of assuring competing rights can be fairly balanced. During talks as to a two party state solution, most parties conceded on both sides that if Jewish settlements were to be given back to the Palestinian Authority this would necessarily have to be related and traded off with the claims of Israeli Arabs to land within Israel proper. In addition the rights of Israelis who were thrown out of the Arab League nations to compensation would also have to be relinquished. It is a matter of saying the past can not be undone but the future can be commenced from a fresh start. Terrorism and Muslim and Jewish extremists do not and have not helped the matter. They are the loud noise and violence that attracts everyone's attention and dominate the political scenarios but the fact remains the vast majority of Palestinians and Israelis just want to be able to live in peace and without violence. No one speaks for them because they do not make noise or attract attention-they just carry on day to day the best they can. I am not interested in divisive rhetoric and name calling. I am not interested in extreme religious beliefs and those who believe in violence and terror. I am interested in using the law and concepts of fairness to try create solutions so that two peoples can live side by side. In that regard this conflict is no different then the one native peoples in Canada face when they try enforce their rights. Rhetoric and partisan politics often dominate the dialogue but it is the law and rational people dettaching from their emotion and trying to be balanced and fair that make the future possible without war or violence. That is why in these discussions I counter the partisan talk when it is anti-Israeli but I also am not afraid to be fair and state, as in this case, no the current status quo on the West Bank is not a good thing-it is an obstacle to peace and it exasperates attempts to arrive at a peaceful settlement and yes Israeli policies on the West Bank have been questionable and I personally believe they have created a nightmare now for Israel. Even if Israel wants to withdraw these settlers it will have a huge internal uprising on its hands which will divide its armed forces asked to go in and enforce the withdrawal and incite some of its right wing religious extremists-the same camp that called Rabin a traitor and consider Tzipi Levni and Ehud Barak fools. On the Palestinian side of the spectrum the Palestinian Authority is a weak barely held together network of competing cells, many terrorist in agenda and many corupt. Mr. Abbas barely holds his office. He has little power and I would remind you he is not the peaceful moderate saint the media portrays him as being. There are many obstacles involved in finding a fair solution but if we are to find one Myata let us once discuss this from a politically neutral perspective and call it what it is-a chaotic mess with no simple black and white explanations or solutions.

I apologize for my misunderstanding D on the Porch. Further to the discussion; Not withstanding the rhetoric that reduces any ownership of land on the West Bank by Israelis to automatically be illegal under international law the actual legal determination as to rightful legal ownership to the land will be a hell of a complex mess because: 1-since collective Palestinian legal rights to control land only arose in 1994 with the interim agreement arrived at by Israel and the Palestinian Authority whereby Israel transferred control of land ownership of 30% of the West Bank to the PA-the remaining 70% still is subject to confusion as to who will be deemed to own it; 2- prior to the above agreement and after Israel took occupation of the West Bank, Palestinians began selling their land on the West Bank to either the Israeli government or individual Israelis; 3- for example the Hemanuta Company, a subsidiary of the Jewish National Fund, began purchasing land from Palestinians on the West Bank in 1971 and sales to private Israelis started in 1979; 4- Hemanuta now claims it holds title to the land on where the Palestinian refugee camp of Deheisheh, near Bethlehem is situated exists as well as a large area between the town of Bethlehem and the settlement of Gilo; 5-prior to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank in 1967, Jordan had passed a law deeming any sale of West Bank land by a Palestinian to Israelis a crime punishable by death and from 1973-87 about 100 people were sentenced by Jordanian courts to death in absentia (they all left with their money to the U.S. or other countries); 6-the PLO and then the PA as well as the many individual Palestinian terror cells also declared/imposed their own death penalties for such sales, including land in Jerusalem; 7-once the Palestinian Authority came into effect in 1994, the PA took full control of registering land in the areas under its civil control according to Jordanian procedures and land records turned over by the Israelis however sale of Palestinian land on the West Bank to Israelis by Palestinians has continued since 1967; 8- for example the Bat-Hen Tshuva Group raised $35m from foreign Jews in autumn 1996 and purchase land on the West Bank, East Jerusalem and near Hebron and it paid 9-under Jordanian, Israeli and for that matter international law, land purchased by individual Israelis can be claimed by the state Israel; 10-complicating the above private transactions was a series of developments that arose in the early 1980’s whereby wide spread confusion as to which Palestinians owned what became wide-spread due to the lack of accurate title documents or suspected forged documents; 11-the Israeli government announced in the early 1980’s that any land on the West Bank not being cultivated by a Palestinian or did not have a legal deed was considered “state property”; 12-not withstanding the above following the Muslim law concept of wikala dawriyya which allows a land-owner to dispose of land to any agent, Israel looked the other way and allowed Palestinian landowners without proper title documentation to sell “unsellable” land to Israel or Israelis with many of these sales not being registered; 13- it appears many of these Wikala dawriyya documents were forged or used to sell the same piece of land more than once and one factor that fueled the use of forged land records were Palestinians trying to obtain visas to the US and who realized showing they owned property boosted their chances of getting a visa; 14- so in fact since 1967 there has been a continuous series of sales by private Palestinians to Israelis or the state of Israel which are not necessarily illegal or would be dismissed as illegal under international law-in fact boundary and inheritance disputes between Palestinians has also been exasperated by non-existent or questionable land sales and records; 15-under Jordanian, Israel and international law title to ownership will depend on a wide range of factors and international law does not have a concept that automatically deems private land sales transactions illegal-those engaged in rhetoric and say Israel illegally occupies the West Bank do so because they have no idea that Israelis did not just show up one day and squat, they came only after the land they are now situated on was paid for to Palestinians-that is something selectively ignored by those who think this matter is black and white or who will simply say if land was sold to an Israeli it is an illegal sale-that is not how international law works-if someone in fact did pay money to someone for land that payment is considered relevant in determining ownership it is not simply dismissed if nothing else the money paid for the land has to be paid back to the Israeli if the land is to be taken back; 16- further complicating the legal issue is the fact under international law land purchased by individual Israelis can be claimed by the state Israel under international law as forming part of its state. This is why I have stated time and time again, to reduce the land rights disputes on the West Bank as to invading Israelis who just showed up and seized land and stayed there is an idiotic and simplistic misrepresentation of the complex series of non stop sales transactions that transferred land ownership. If someone is to argue these transactions were illegal they would have to prove this-in anticipation of this Israel made a point of documenting the sale transactions and storing the documents in safe keeping and sent researchers to Turkey to trace back the sales transactions to make sure the owners who sold them had the legal right to sell what they did. So Israel does in fact have a legal right to establish sovereignty over West Bank land because of these private transactions and it will be up to the Palestinian Authority or Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch or Higgly to prove otherwise. Quoting a Washington Post article or UN study may or may not be germaine to the determination of land title. The PA is well aware of the above predicament and this is why it has a vested interest in having Israel trade off any land rights on the West Bank purchased legally in return for a peace settlement with Israel. Not withstanding the extremist Jewish settlers and extremist terror elements on the West Bank the practical reality of the situation may yet dictate the need for a rational negotiated outcome in spite of those who want to yell and scream. From a purely practical point of view Palestinians need somewhere to live and Israel can not indefinitely occupy the West Bank but not not consider it part of the state of Israel which is what it is doing. Israel has never annexed or absorbed the West Bank because that would mean it would have to offer all West Bank Palestinians citizenship which it is not willing to do for obvious reasons. I would suggest Likud's approach of this continued indefinite stalemate is just not going to wash and Netanyahu knows it and if he does become PM he will have to negotiate no different then Tzipi L. did despite any speeches he gave to the contrary for domestic consumption during the recent election in Israel. It is a massive legal mess. A big quick sand pit.

In my personal opinion I believe Israel's continued expansion and settlement policies on the West Bank create major obstacles to achieving a full and comprehensive peace settlement with Palestinians. That is a personal political opinion. It is not a legal opinion. The law as to who has the legal right to do what I would contend is so complex because of the overlapping domestic and international legal issues it defies a simple opinion. According to the law there are equal sets of rights that in an overall peace settlement would have to be balanced and the only way to balance them would be through negotiations to achieve compromise and trading off certain rights to be entitled to others. Certain legal issues would entail exclusive interests (where only one side can enjoy the right, i.e., private ownership of land ), other issues would entail mutual interests ( rights that could exist simultaneously or be shared, i.e., access to water, access to work or free trade, security) and others would deal with rights that might be mixed interests (one side willing to trade away a right to get another, i.e., Israel gives up settlements on the West Bank in return for Palestinians relinquishing certain land rights within Israel). I would also repeat as I have in many other posts, what Israel has done illegally on the West Bank according to international law is in governing Israeli citizens on the West Bank through its civilian government but at the same time governing Palestinians of the West Bank through its military administration and government. Under international law anyone on the West Bank should be administered by the same military administration. In regards to whether the actual settlements are illegal or not, there is considerable contraversy as to how to apply the 4th Geneva Convention among other international doctrines. There is a repeated myth that Israel occupes the West Bank. A sovereign nation can't occupy something that is not a sovereign state or has never been an occupied state. That is a misuse of the international legal concept of occupation because most people use it in the layman sense, i.e., you are physically there, so you occupy it. In fact the word is so misused certain NGO's now regularly engage in its misuse. Since the West Bank was never a sovereign nation any land rights of Palestinians will flow from the interim agreements the Palestinian Authority signed with Israel or undistirbed and continuous use or occupation of land by private citizens. While many start with the assumption the West Bank always belonged to Palestinians, that is a political concept, not a legal one. The right of a state to exist and obtain sovereignty of the land defined within its borders and for that matter ownership of land is established when in conflict or in the absence of legal title by uninterupted or uncontested possession or use of the land. This is why for example in Canada's North numerous nations are now trying to asset the right to access the Northern portions of our country arguing Canada has never established continued use of such land. What complicates matters on the West Bank is that technically the creation of Jordan was illegal although under international law it has become legal but the borders between Israel and Jordan have never been legally defined. Technically Jordan and Egypt although they have entered peace agreements with Israel do not recognize where its borders should be and so Jordan as much as Israel does not know where the borders with a sovereign nation on the West Bank should be. Any negotiation as to land and sovereignty rights with the West Bank deals with not just Israel and Palestinians but Jordan. There are also Jews who have lived on the West Bank uninterupted since the Biblical days and some would not recognize any Israeli state due to their ultra-orthodox beliefs while others believe in the right of the State of Israel to exist and believe their uninterupted enjoyment of land on the West Bank gives them a right that should not be ignored. Things are further complicated by internal land right disputes between Israeli Muslims and other Israelis that over-lap with the land rights issues on the West Bank and may have to be relinquished as part of an overall compromise to balance the collective legal rights of both Israelis and Palestinians.

If someone is genuinely interested in the complex series of international and domestic laws and treaties that attach to the land ownership issues and conflcits on the West Bank I have prepared a list of web-sites for you: Here are two summaries of most of the laws and treaties: http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/Y8999T/y8999t0f.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International...sraeli_conflict Here is a bibliography of some of the many papers on the laws regarding land rights: http://www.law.du.edu/latcrit/documents/es...ennedy_2007.pdf Now for those who insist on trying to exploit the land rights conflict on the West Bank by using rhetoric to incite resentment against Israel and reduce this complex issue to the usual Israel is bad and evil and an international war criminal partisan exercise if they are interested there is another side of the arguement. The official Israeli government position on settlements in the West Bank can be found at: http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Law/L...INTERNATION.htm http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/2000_...bout%20the%20We A summary of the legal arguement which states Israeli settlement on the West Bank is not illegal can be found at: http://www.jcpa.org/brief/brief2-16.htm and http://www.acpr.org.il/madorim/0811-bikoret-mdannE.pdf A politically neutral article explaining how Israeli domestic laws operate with land rights on the West Bank can be found at: http://inscribe.iupress.org/doi/abs/10.297...journalCode=isr I also recommend you looking at this NEUTRAL SYNOPSIS OF THE LAND DISPUTE ISSUES ON THE WEST BANK: http://israelipalestinian.procon.org/viewa...?questionID=533. Trying to discuss the complex conflict in regards to land ownership rights on the West Bank requires taking into consideration a very extensive series of competing and multi-layered legal doctrines. I would contend engaging in political rhetoric to reduce them to rigid, simplistic, black and white labels to incite Israel evil Palestine victim sentiment is not productive nor does it do anything but misrepresent and distort the complexity of the dispute because of politically partisan agendas that wish to only present one version of interpretation of the conflict. In an effort to confront the rhetoric and name calling and challenge people to debate and discuss these issues and keep their own political biases out of their examination of the legal doctrine, I encourage people when they do research on this topic to not simply pull an article you agree with out of context and assume the issue ends there.

If Israel had intended to destroy Gaza then why is it still there. It is this kind of hyperbole and political rhetoric that becomes tiresome. By the way there is no country. Teh alleged sovereign state of Palestine does not yet exist because Hamas and the P.A. can not agree on anything. If Hamas was serious on forming a sovereign state in the Gaza and West Bank it would not cling to this idiocy of crying out as of today as we speak that the only solution is to give it all of Jordan, Israel as well as the West Bank and Gaza and turn that into a Muslim theocracy. Of course you forget that right. The fact that Hamas has an open and continuing policy to wipe Israel off the map, oh let us just be selective about that right? Rhetoric. Meaningless rhetoric.

Stephen Hawking has suggested if the universe is completely self-contained it would have neither beginning nor end-it would simply be. So some then argue, if the universe simply is then it was never created and there w ould be no creator. Now for me all Hawking is doing with his theories on quantum phsyics is to try use the laws of physics to explain and so he looks for balance and harmony to emerge for him to then be able to describe the law that describes the process of that balance and harmony. I would argue he is neutral he is neither an atheist or theologian, just some guy trying to do what scientists do, use logic to try define that which appears but may not be. I tend myself to lean towards a definition of God Baruch Spinoza worked with and heavily influenced Einstein and could be the same phenomena Hawking describes as the self-contained universe that just is-and hat is a concept of God that refers to a phenomena that is absolutely infinite and what ever "it" is it has infinite possibilities and attributes and so we humans can not figure it out because any theory of relativity or time can only approximate part of its infinite expression-i would say it is a phenomena that we canot perceive because of our limitations and can only appriximate and will never be able to properly define but we can define some of its infinitely expanding expressions. I believe the infinite process which spewed us all out like particles from a sneeze as we free float each one of us a God and universe unto ourselves with the infinite ability to evolve and expand if we create positivitely but also the infinite ability to devolve and shrink if we pursue negativity-we are all particles with negative and positive components that clash and that clash is what fuels the will to be, the search for meaning-I do believe the eternal process that started this series of never ending adventures of pursuing meaning can not interfere with the free choice of all the particles in the infinite process otherwise it would extinguish them all like a blackhole does matter. Or in layman's term-I believe God is a nostril that sneezes and expels me and you-germs and we just move along contaminating things. I mean on one level it appears like we are simply spreading germs, and so that is why some people say God is mad or an sob for letting it all happen as it does, but then me I say-well maybe you are not just a germ or a gloob of snot flinging in the air, maybe there is something else-maybe we are not just mucus but some organic ooze that shapes a vision you and I can not see cause we are blinded by our individuality and dettachment from the whole, to be able to see it. I like to call it my cosmic theory of 'snot.